Caught up in circles, confusion is nothing new

Submitted by vastleft on Mon, 2007-09-03 08:27.

hillary clinton

Cue the climactic scene of the charming time-travel film Time After Time…

Trying to save the woman he loves, H.G. Wells makes a deal with his adversary — an old friend who’s been revealed as Jack the Ripper.

“You have my word as a gentleman,” says Jack, as Wells makes good on his part of the bargain.

The Ripper continues, as he does not reciprocate: “Now there’s just one thing. I would’ve expected that you’d noticed I am not a gentleman.”

This comes to mind when I hear Hillary Clinton talk like this:

“You have to know when to stick to your principles and fight,” she said, “and know when to make principled compromises.”

At one level, of course she’s right when she says “You can’t pretend the system doesn’t exist.”

But if unlike Al “Assault on Reason” Gore, you can’t acknowledge that those across the aisle are quite demonstrably not gentlemen, this thing ain’t going to have a Hollywood happy ending.

And despite the Serenity Prayer “reasonableness” of her position, it is rather distressingly tell-tale for her to describe circumstances under which she would not stick to her principles.

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Thanks, VL

Submitted by lambert on Mon, 2007-09-03 08:54.

I read excerpts from that speech in the Times, and, after putting my fist through another damn monitor, I went looking for it on Hillary’s site, but the famously disciplined Clinton operation hadn’t managed to post the full text. (I wanted to see if she had a plan for restoring Constitutional government. I mean, she might have one, but the Times stenographer might have missed it.)

And damn if the extremely high-powered and juggernaut-like Clinton team still hasn’t posted the text. However, I did find a 2006 speech on privacy before the American Constitutional Society. After discussing FISA, she says:

[The administration] relied on questionable legal authority and bypassed our system of checks and balances. … Congress must have an oversight role and help decide where to draw the line between privacy and national security. But we can’t draw anything without knowing the facts. At a minimum, the House and Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees are entitled to know, on a confidential basis whenever and wherever necessary, the full extent of and rationale for any electronic surveillance programs. …. It is a cause for deep concern that the Administration did not seek changes to the FISA law to legitimize its surveillance program but instead deliberately chose to act outside of that law.

Nice work on that, Hillary. I guess we all know by now exactly how much your “deep concern” means. Because, as Shystee says, policy outcomes are all that matter. It only takes one Senator to shut the whole process down; you didn’t; you are therefore directly and personally responsible for gutting the Fourth Amendment and turning over warrantless surveillance authority to whoever Bush selects to replace Gonzales.

NOTE You too, Mr. Rock Star.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan